DRAM-Scaling-1974 Step 11 Name the Generation This Fork Actually Served

# Name the Generation This Fork Actually Served: 64K Through 1M DRAM

The trench-versus-stacked fork this series built in the abstract across Steps 2 through 8 was not a theoretical exercise; it was the real design decision facing DRAM manufacturers at the 64-kilobit through 1-megabit generations, and naming that generation directly sharpens everything the earlier steps argued in general terms.

## 1. Attach Real Generations to This Series' Own Numbers

Step 1's capacitance crisis ($C_s$ collapsing under planar scaling) became commercially unavoidable at roughly the 64-kilobit generation of the early 1980s, continued through the 256-kilobit and 1-megabit generations across the mid-to-late 1980s, and is the same pressure this project's own `dram64k_1979` series treats from the addressing-and-refresh side of the same generation, not the capacitor side. The two series describe the same historical moment from two different, non-overlapping angles: `dram64k_1979` asks how the array is addressed and refreshed at that density; this series asks how the capacitor survives at that density.

Name the Generation This Fork Actually Served: 64K Through 1M DRAM Step 11 — dram-scaling-1974 Attach Real Generations to This Series' Own Numb see Section 1 Name the Real Companies on Each Side of the Fork see Section 2 Confirm the Naming Does Not Change the Technical see Section 3 THREE-PART ARGUMENT, ONE STEP dram-scaling-1974 extension, step 11 of this project's DRAM lineage

## 2. Name the Real Companies on Each Side of the Fork

IBM, Texas Instruments, and Siemens are the manufacturers most consistently associated with pursuing the trench path this series built in Steps 3, 6, and 7. Hitachi, Toshiba, and later Samsung are most consistently associated with the stacked path this series built in Steps 4 and 8. This split was not arbitrary allegiance — it followed from each organization's own existing process strengths (deep reactive-ion etch capability favored trench adopters; polysilicon deposition and patterning strength favored stacked adopters), a real industrial-strategy dimension Steps 2 through 9's purely electrical comparison did not need to include to make its technical argument, but which explains why the fork this series describes as symmetric in principle was not symmetric in practice.

Step 11 in the Dram-Scaling-1974 Lineage what this step inherits and what it hands forward, by name Step 11 this step Inherits prior steps Hands Off named thread NO CELL-PHYSICS OR ARCHITECTURE RE-ARGUED each step adds a distinct angle; none re-derive settled prior content

## 3. Confirm the Naming Does Not Change the Technical Argument

Attaching real generations and real companies to this series' already-completed technical comparison does not revise anything Steps 1 through 10 concluded about trench and stacked capacitors' relative merits — it simply confirms those merits were not academic. The industry actually built both geometries, at real volume, for real products, for roughly a decade before stacked capacitor technology became the more broadly adopted path into the 1990s, a convergence this series' own Step 10 retrospective already gestured toward without dating it this specifically.

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